A coalition of international law enforcement agencies has seized the website associated with the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex (“garantex[.]org”), nearly three years after the service was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in April 2022.
“The domain for Garantex has been seized by the United States Secret Service pursuant to a seizure warrant obtained by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia under the authority of 18 U.S.C. §§ 981 and 982,” reads a seizure banner on the website.
The operation was carried out in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, the Dutch National Police, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt aka BKA), the Frankfurt General Prosecutor’s Office, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, and the Estonian National Criminal Police.
Founded in 2019, Garantex was previously subject to U.S. sanctions for facilitating transactions from darknet markets and illicit actors such as Hydra and Conti. In late 2023, sanctions were also imposed against a Russian national named Ekaterina Zhdanova for her role in laundering the proceeds of ransomware groups like Ryuk via Garantex.
The development comes weeks after the European Union announced similar sanctions against the crypto exchange late last month for its close association with already sanctioned Russian banks such as Sberbank, T-Bank, and Alfa-Bank, prompting Tether to block its crypto wallets.
In a message posted on its Telegram channel, Garantex said: “Dear users! We have bad news. Tether has entered the war against the Russian crypto market and blocked our wallets worth more than 2.5 billion rubles.”
“We are temporarily suspending all services, including cryptocurrency withdrawals, while our entire team solves this problem. We are fighting and will not give up!”
The Moscow-headquartered exchange has since openly published the list of cryptocurrency wallets that have been blocked by Tether.
